Friday, September 21, 2012

Why Do We Travel?

This week, I gave an interview about the book that started it all, Signature Tastes of Bellingham (at Village Books, don't go anywhere else for it!), and the writer, Jessica Verner and I crafted the below...it captures our motivation perfectly...

Why do we travel?

For some, it’s a break from a well-known daily routine. For others, it’s the triple thrill pleasures of planning, experiencing and remembering. No matter why, when we do strike out and see a new place, we always bring something back. The airport tag on the luggage stays attached until the next trip. The coaster from that funky little bar gets tacked to the corkboard in our cubicle. All of it, a visual reminder lest we forget.

Here in Bellingham, that very notion has taken root in the form of a cookbook. Well, maybe not so much a cookbook as a “Culinary Postcard”. A recently transplanted firefighter, Steven W. Siler, came here and saw with a visitor’s eyes things that made Bellingham special: the people and the food. So he went out and heard the stories. He gathered the recipes. And he photographed almost everything. Rarely the food, but the sights and the people caught red-handed in the act of being themselves. And from that, the Signature Tastes of Bellingham was born.

And while the City of Subdued Excitement is a unique place, it’s not the only place that’s special. That firefighter knew they were everywhere. So that notion that began as a simple homage to the city has now become not just a nationwide, but an international effort. Its purpose is to capture and share those wonderful sights, those incredible tastes and intriguing places that define the area. Thus, the Signature Tastes series of “culinary postcards” was born, to become the one takeaway that visitors and locals alike can embrace when they start a sentence with “…Remember that place?...”.